Restroom Graffiti
by irishais
Summary: We leave fragments of memories on restroom walls...their meanings are special to us. The question is, what do they mean to others? COMPLETE.
1. BFF

_**Restroom Graffiti**_

_-irishais-**  
**_

_AN: "I heart him forever...Call So-and-So for a good time...BFF 4Eva from years ago..." Words inked on old plastic walls can sometimes mean more than anyone realizes. The idea that we leave our messages almost carelessly while we're taking care of...ahem...business in the restroom is an amazing thing to consider. Could these bits of Sharpie-scribbled histories have the power to affect someone's life? I honestly don't quite know where this is going, so I'll leave it tagged as "incomplete" for now._

**1. "BFF." "I heart U." "U R My Sunshine."**

These three letters, no matter where she went, always jumped out at her amidst the scrawled sexual messages and phone numbers that may or may not actually connect, called to her from underneath hasty proposals and names that held little meaning to her.

_BFF_. Best Friends Forever.

Usually it was surrounded by hearts and rainbows and cutesy drawings; most of the time it was in a horrendously bright shade of pink. She often wondered why so many people seemed to always have a permanent marker on them when going to the bathroom, but no matter where they stopped on the seemingly neverending road trips, even if it was the same place they had been a dozen times before, the graffiti always seemed to expand.

She was often astounded that the toilet seat managed to remain as unmarked as it did. There was that one time in...was it Tennessee? It might have been. Anyway, the women's room had been "closed for repairs" and she had found that someone had liberally colored the men's room's only toilet with a particularly putrid shade of green.

Best friends forever, she thought, her mind returning to its original train of thought. _I've never had a best friend forever_, she mused. _At least not one willing to display it to the world in a Sharpie-drafted message to total strangers._

With a chuckle, she mused that her partner had probably scrawled her name in a few restroom stalls, most likely while drunk.

She reached for the toilet paper and found herself staring at that abomination to the English language--just above the scuffed white dispenser, in plain black letters: "I heart U."

_U. Why is it always just "u"? Is it too hard to write the extra two letters?_ her brain screamed, but her heart jumped a bit.

"I heart U." There was no other message in this space. Just a carefully drawn perfect little black heart nestled between the two letters. They had even taken the time to add a period at the end, emphasizing their point.

She wondered who it had been left for as she gingerly pushed the lever to flush the toilet. It gargled at her as she exited the cramped stall, making a beeline for the sink.

A declaration of love? A message of goodwill toward mankind? Or just some kind, marker-bearing girl who wanted to make people just a little happier?

The paper towel dispenser said "U R My Sunshine." The same handwriting, the same bold strokes of a fat black marker designed to never be lifted.

She smiled, finally, her mind not even protesting the missing letters in the sentence.

"I heart U. U R My Sunshine."

Mysteries in a Sharpie-laden hand. It was nice to know there were still mysteries outside of the paranormal and supernatural. She waved briefly to Mulder, who saluted her with his gas station-variety coffee cup. She rather hoped they would stop here on the way back.


	2. Call Mary Sue for a Good Time!

_**Restroom Graffiti**_

_-irishais-_

**2. "Call Mary Sue for a Good Time."**

Scully vowed that she would never again drink truck-stop coffee, and had come to the conclusion that the reason there were always a large number of trucks at the stop itself was simply because all of the drivers were busy attempting to placate the Bad Coffee Gods.

Why they still persisted in _drinking_ the foul stuff was beyond her. _God bless Starbucks, every one, _she thought, and as she reached for her purse to get another Tums, her stomach stopped churning. Had it passed?

No. Definitely not.

She stuck the chalky purple tablet under her tongue and directed her eyes to the door littered with the usual scrawls. This was a place less frequented by people apt to write life-affirming statements on the walls. Instead, crude come-ons and lewd propositions beckoned her. She pitied Sarah and Jessica, Amy, Jane, and Lisa. Liz and Mary were especially popular; their names and numbers covered at least half the door.

_A regular dating service_, Scully mused. It was a veritable phone directory in this stall.

She made a nasty remark toward the red lettering that said "Call Dana for a good time!" The telephone number didn't match, but it was the _principle _that counted. Degrading to the female lot, that's what truck stop restrooms were, and then she had to stop and wonder why there were so many listings for women _in_ the women's restroom. Did men just congregate in here at a specific time to write girls' names on the walls? _A damn cult_.

With a grimace, Scully remembered the stigma of high school, where having messages such as this written on the bathroom walls was basically a blacklisting of the girl in question. Then, especially, anonymity was rare. She had always been the "new girl," due to her father's constant military transfers. There were probably more than a few stalls that bore her name and old home telephone numbers.

She scowled at her name.

_Stupid graffiti._


	3. Hello Goodbye

_**Restroom Graffiti**_

_-irishais-_

_A/N: I don't know where the plotbunnies are going, but they demand I continue. To the person who put this on their story alert list, thanks! Bear with me as I try to do justice to this bizarre idea that actually came to me in the shower. _

**3. "Hello. Goodbye." **

The hotel bathroom was bland. She and Mulder had been chasing fake leads for three days, and all she wanted to do was sleep. Unfortunately, running through hell in the form of a construction site and being forced to climb at least three hills of red dirt had eliminated sleep from its place at the top of the list. She didn't think she had ever been so grateful for a shower in her life.

She blindly reached for the faucet and shut off the steaming waterfall and groped for the towel she vaguely remembered dropping on the floor outside of the tub. Hand met cotton, and as she tucked the length of material around her body, she sighed deeply. "You need a better job," she informed her reflection sternly as she tugged her brush through her dripping red locks. "Or therapy," followed as the usual afterthought. Scully couldn't begin to count the number of times she had had this conversation with her reflection. Come to think of it, pretty much every time had been after she and Mulder had been through some sort of harebrained chase sequence or something of that ilk. "Therapy," she told herself firmly. "Get some therapy. Or a vacation."

"Scully!" Mulder's voice interrupted her self-scolding, and it took willpower she hadn't even known she possessed to not throw her brush at the door.  
"_What_?" she demanded.

"Is my deodorant in there?" her partner asked, apparently oblivious to her irritation.

"I don't know! Give me a minute. You can find it when I'm done." Scully cursed, not for the first time, Mulder's keen sense that usually ended up in places with one room or bugs. At least this time, this place didn't offer an hourly rate...

"Okay!"

She glared at the door, and noticed something out of the corner of her eye, just above the knob.

"Hello. Goodbye."

_You're joking_. Scully knelt and rubbed a thumb across the black letters. Permanent. Astounding. Graffiti artists everywhere. Rising, Scully exchanged the thin hotel towel for her robe and exited the bathroom.

"Hello. Goodbye."

The words joined the collection of other restroom nonsense that was starting to form its very own category in the small notebook she kept in her purse. She surveyed the short list, and decided that she was probably losing her mind for even paying attention to graffiti that had more than likely been around for ages.

_BFF. I heart U. U R My Sunshine. Call for a good time...Hello. Goodbye. _

She wondered if it was some sort of conspiracy, and then thought some very not-nice things about Fox Mulder because the idea sounded like something that should have taken root in _his _brain. Still, she couldn't help but allow herself the thought that the nonsense sayings existed for _her_. They usually seemed to match her mood of the moment.

Scully tossed the notebook back in her bag and flopped onto the bed.

_Hello. Goodbye_.

Maybe she should just let it go. She had more important things to worry about outside of some bathroom graffiti.


	4. Kilroy Was Here

_**Restroom Graffiti**_

_-irishais-_

_A/N: The plot monsters have told me to end at 5. I'm offering this to you as it comes out of my head, before I go back and fashion it into some sort of coherence--my muses are perched on my shoulder, whispering in my ears, and after this...tale, I suppose I could call it, is out of my head, there may be another version of this. May. _

_Bear with me; the muses have demanded it be written like this, and it shall be so.  
_

**4. "Kilroy Was Here."**

There it was.

The one she had been...almost _waiting_ for, when she thought about it. Had practically been dreading it, once she realized it was there. It stared at her in its blue ball-point pen glory. The beady eyes, the elongated nose, the half-hearted hands. She and Mulder had found the man that had led them on the wild goose chase through Graffiti Hell, as she was coming to call it, and now...now it led to this.

It was almost over, she decided, and if it didn't end now, she thought the graffiti artists to be very sadistic in their choice of last words.

**Kilroy was here**, it declared in bold block letters, filled in by thin blue scribbles in an effort to dominate the false-wood door.

Kilroy. Kill. Roy. Kill Roy.

_Dana, this is no time to lose your mind_.

The irritation she had come to know as her subconscious was probably right. This really was not a good time to crack; generally, preparing to kick open a stall in which a suspected killer might possibly be behind was usually not the best time to lose one's faculties.

"We know you're in there!" she called, her hands steady as she aimed the black gun at the door. "Roy, we know you're in there. Come out peacefully, and we won't shoot."

"That's what you think," Mulder muttered, aiming firmly at the stall door.

She resisted the urge to smack him. "Roy. Come out here. Don't make me shoot you."

Kill Roy.

The infamous cartoon stared at her, eyes wide and unblinking, a blue, unshakeable presence.

It had been barely a day since she saw

"Hello. Goodbye."

and now she was staring down her fate. She had almost chalked up seeing the familiar car in the gas station lot to hallucinations from too little sleep, but she was glad Mulder had decided _he_ wasn't seeing things.

"Roy..." Scully stepped forward, hoping perhaps her movement would cause the hiding man to betray his whereabouts.

She whirled at a creak, but a burly man in a plaid shirt shot his arms in the air and retreated at the sight of the petite woman with a gun. To prevent further interruptions...and to prevent a criminal from possibly escaping...she turned the lock, the sound echoing dully.

What a case. There had been almost no adventure outside of trying to run down this man through a construction site, giving up when it had seemed obvious that he had fled the state (Mulder hadn't even protested when Scully had placed calls to the surrounding states' police forces), and finally, hopefully, cornering him in this foul men's room in the middle of nowhere.

A deserted stretch of highway outside.

_Bang_. Mulder's foot burst through one of the cheap wooden doors. "Empty," he announced, and proceeded to break open the doors in a similar fashion.

_Don't lie to me now, Kilroy. _

Dana Scully wondered where something akin to a prayer had come from, especially when she had directed it toward a cartoon sketch. "Roy!" she yelled, hating the sound of her voice bouncing off the walls. "Roy, come out here! We don't want to hurt you!"

She followed Mulder down the line of stalls, and tossed a devil's glare at the window as they stood before the last door, Mulder drawing back his foot one last time.

_Call Dana for a Good Time._

Underlined twice in...was that _lipstick_?

"Roy!" she yelled again.


	5. The Truth is Out There

_**Restroom Graffiti**_

**5. The Truth is Out There. **

Dana Scully had always harbored a strange notion that the hooks on public restroom doors were not as strong as they appeared, and that the second she put her purse on there, it would break off and she would have to chase down the contents of her bag across shiny tiled floors. Needless to say, the oversized purse always remained on the floor.

Today, however, it sat in her lap as she rummaged through it for a particular item she had swiped from her partner's desk while he was giving his report to Skinner. Triumphantly, her hand snaked back out from the jungle of metal keys, makeup and a pack of mints.

Logically, she knew that it was illegal, especially within the hallowed walls of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, but the other three-quarters of her mind still insisted it was a good idea. She had conceded to the logical part just a bit though--her destination had been the restroom in the lobby, where her actions would remain inconspicuous amongst the crowds of tourists that swarmed through here every day.

_You earned this. You owe it to them. _

Them. The unnamed legacy of wannabe writers and poets, of would-be solicitors and artists. The people whose random doodles and scribblings while taking care of "business" who had fueled her imagination at least for a little bit with thoughts not based on extraterrestrials or the paranormal. Even the supernatural had stayed out of her brain for a bit. She owed it to them.

Taking a deep breath (she was still a federal agent--she wasn't quite used to breaking the law, even though she and Mulder probably did it all the time), she tugged at the slick plastic cap. It came off with a pop, revealing that familiar marker odor. She twisted so that she was sideways on the porcelain seat, facing the plain metal tissue dispensers. The ugly pink wall was unadorned, and she carefully set the red felt tip against the smooth wall.

"Lunchtime, Agent Scully?" The security guard smiled as she approached the exit doors.

"You bet." She returned his grin. Perhaps she would go to that diner Mulder liked to torture her with. The restrooms were always full of interesting things.

**-The Truth is Out There-**

_A/N: Well, that's it. All done. Tagged "complete." _Restroom Graffiti _has come to a close._

_I hope you enjoyed it, or at least were intrigued by it. The writings on restroom walls have always interested me--why do people want to leave behind their memories for perfect strangers? It's an odd phenomenon, and the muses decided they wanted that for their next story. The muses also decided they wanted me to write this in the wee hours of the morning, so that may explain why it feels a bit surreal. _

_As far as the style for this goes, I felt that I had to eschew linear timelines, and just write the scenes as ones Scully would remember as important, or at least the sorts of flashes of lifetimes people always have. It's an abrupt departure from my usual style, but it worked in a strange way for this, I think. _

_As Scully notes, it IS illegal to vandalize public property--this is not endorsing that in any way, shape or form. In addition, I forgot to mention it five chapters ago, but hey, Chris Carter, thanks for letting me borrow your characters for a bit. I had fun, but you can have them back now, since they're yours. _

_irishais_


End file.
